Movie Review-The Confession

Plot-A story of redemption and an exploration of good and evil featuring a hit man and a priest. Kiefer Sutherland and John Hurt star.

Review-The running time of this dvd special features and all goes a little over 95 minutes. Going into this, I did not know this was a web tv series that repackaged as a dvd due to how popular it was on hulu. Basically this can be called a two man play. Almost like Swimming to Cambodia with a hit man and a priest.. Each episode of this show, we get to know something from Kiefer’s past that put him in that confessional and made him what he is and do what he does. Kiefer is basically challenging faith and questioning god. Hurt is the true star here, while Kiefer around the 40 minute mark just seems to get redundant. How many times can you see the same facial expressions saying the same thing over and over? By the 63 minute mark this dvd just seemed like a better idea in very small doses than a feature film. It just seemed Kiefer kept repeating the same script over and over, almost to the point of complete parody. We learn his abusive childhood led him into the welcoming arms of a neighborhood mob. One episode he tells the story about what happens when someone snitches in the gang. And, from there we learn he decided he needed no witnesses or friends and decided to do his own thing. One episode we learn how he gave a father a choice to kill himself or let Kiefer kill his family instead. Scenes that Kiefer got to act outside the confessional in flashback were very fun. Another scene that involved a crooked businessman who robbed a lot of people of money was very tense and kept the pace moving and took the show in a fun direction that I wished it would have explored more.

Each episode I guess lasts 22 minutes, with the final episode bringing a very bad twist to the show which made the show seem ridiculous for even going there. All in all, John Hurt gives another great performance, the material is strong enough, and the script at times is very well written. If this was a comedy, I would have embraced it more, because it seemed so much to border on self parody. But, for 54 minutes of the 63, I had fun with it enough to recommend it barely.